


Time Goes By

by TraceyLordHaven



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Apparently I don't do happy, Heavy Angst, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22273807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TraceyLordHaven/pseuds/TraceyLordHaven
Summary: Title says it all.  Time goes by.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 11
Kudos: 21





	Time Goes By

She sighed as she picked up the mug of warm milk. Maybe tonight she’d actually sleep.

Sleep stayed away every night because she had to fight a war with herself – with her memories, her dreams, etc. She’d lie there in bed, eyes closed and body curled up tight, waiting to drift off. But her mind would be going at warp 10.

So she'd hide under the was under the covers as the images invaded her mind. She saw the faces of long-gone friends, relived the happy moments of her youth. Then she saw the men she had committed to, the fantasy futures she had imagined with them, then their loss. Her mind drifted others who had pursued her, to school friends grown into men suffering from mid-life crises. Handsome faces she had encountered in her travels. Even a couple of truly flaky free-sprits her artist sister had introduced her to.

In fact, one of the flaky ones was in her bed right now, sleeping like a stone. It irritated her. He irritated her.

Of course, there was the one face her mind returned to every night. She sighed and restlessly turned over.

Why did she torture herself? Why couldn’t she accept that chance had passed?

"When was the last time I even saw him?" she asked herself as she stared at the ceiling. It had to have been almost a year.

Then she wondered, "If I saw him tomorrow, would I still feel a pull? Would he? Would I just turn and run?"

Sleep was a long way off.

\------------

He cursed as he stubbed his toe on the chair leg. "I should have turned on the lights," he thought to himself. It wasn't as though the lights would have made him more awake than he already was.

He had lain in bed for nearly an hour, trying to fall asleep. The woman next to him breathed deeply and regularly. Her breathing had an oddly exact rhythm. Each breath in exactly three-point-two seconds long, each breath out exactly four-point-seven seconds long.

It drove him nuts. It made trying to fall asleep impossible.

"Of course, trying to fall asleep is, in and of itself, ridiculous," he thought. "You can’t TRY HARDER to fall asleep, you just relax into it." Problem was, his mind was nowhere near relaxed.

So he had gotten up to read a little bit, to see if that would calm his mind. It was only after spending several minutes in his book that he remembered who had given it to him. It had been right before they returned, and that was, what, three years ago?

Damn, now he was thinking about her.

No, this read would not be relaxing.

If throwing the book across the room would have driven thoughts of her from his head, he would have happily done so. Instead, he held the book in his hands, looking at it. He looked inside where she had left her birthday message and signature. He ran his fingers across her script, as if touching it would cast some sort of spell to turn back time.

Using his index finger, he traced the loops of her signature. He imagined her slender hand holding a pen as she wrote inside the cover of this gift, the last one he had ever gotten from her. 

Seeing her hand in his mind’s eye wasn't satisfying, though. And remembering her face still hurt too much. He slammed the book shut, then looked at it as if apologizing. He put it gently back on the shelf. 

He picked up a padd, thinking, "Not going to sleep tonight, might as well get some work done."

\------------

Her daily ritual. Coffee, maybe some toast. Shower. Clothes, hair, a little make-up. She always looked carefully in the mirror before leaving, eying her body critically. 

"What have I allowed time to do to me?" she asked very nearly every day.

Of course, she knew why she cared so much about her appearance, why she still made some effort before entering the world’s new day. She might run into him. He was teaching nearby now, had been for about eight years. And if she did see him, she wanted to look good. Or look as good as possible. She actually doubted she ever had been or would be attractive enough. She had convinced herself that he would only accept perfection in a woman. And she had lived too long and too much to be anywhere close to perfect.

"I could lose some weight," she would think. Then she’d be reminded of every other reason she knew she’d never be attractive enough – her face, her hair, her skin, her smile. She'd find herself listing every physical flaw she could identify in herself. And then, sensibly, she’d start wondering if she was really as unattractive as she felt. Maybe she actually was still something of a catch. Maybe her view of herself was inaccurate.

Then she’d stop and berate herself for her naval-gazing. And she would remember that of all the qualities he said he loved about her, insecurity and self-absorption were never on the list.

"Maybe he knew this is what I would become," she would think, "and that's why he gave up."

\------------

Sitting at his desk, he thought about every remedy he tried to get her out of his mind after he lost her. 

"When I walked away," he corrected himself.

He had wanted to start over. He married someone else. He pretended the woman who had been so dear to him was a stranger. He banished her from his daily conversations with mutual friends. He asked no one about her.

His wife, of course, discovered soon after the wedding that someone else was in his heart. She thought she could chase out the ghosts, poor girl. She tried for years. But ghosts are the remnants of dead things -- his love for the woman he didn't marry was still alive.

His wife gave him children, who he loved. "I love my wife," he used to repeat to himself over and over and over. He thought if he said often enough, he might one day believe it. He certainly appreciated the woman. On paper, she was all he wanted, all he could ask for. In reality, she was nothing he really desired.

When she asked for a divorce thirteen years after their marriage, he didn’t fight it. When she remarried soon after, it was to a man they had both known for years. A kind, loving man who inspired in her a joy that he had never been able to. And since he wanted his children to grow up surrounded by love, he didn't fight for custody. He knew his own soul had become so brittle that he couldn't provide what he wanted them to have. 

He did love his children, of that he was certain. He was proud of them.

But he couldn't help it. Sometimes he would remember that long-ago love and wonder what *their* children would have looked like. And sometimes, he felt painful longing caused by the absence of sons and daughters who never existed. A pain that missing his actual children never caused.

He knew he couldn't turn back time. He would never want to wish away his kids.

And yet ….

\------------

Her friends and coworkers were always pestering her to “get out there” and find someone. She could think of no chore more tedious.

They would remind her, it’s not too late, you can still marry. She would roll her eyes.

Marriage. To who? And what would that do to her life? She felt so locked into patterns she’d established, she couldn’t see breaking them for someone else. The basic notion of love was not offensive to her, but the idea of having a roommate was very unpleasant. And with a marriage, he wouldn't just be a roommate, he'd be a husband. Someone she couldn't toss out or ignore. She would be accountable to someone.

At this point in her life, she didn't think she would ever again find a person who could understand her or her motivations and foibles. 

She was tired -- oh, so tired.

Then her friends would suggest adopting, having a child without a relationship. And she would roll her eyes again and remind that well-meaning friend that her career didn't lend itself to single motherhood. Oh, sure, she knew it was done everywhere by all kinds of women, but the thought of doing it herself depressed her terribly. 

"I know myself well enough to know I’d need a partner," she would say. And she meant it.

After those conversations, she would invariably think of the times when she and he had discussed children. In the abstract, of course. They never discussed anything truly intimate like pregnancy (or getting pregnant). But they both agreed that they wanted kids who would be interesting people. Not perfect models of anything or anyone, just intriguing people. 

One night, after too much wine, they found themselves speculating what kind of children they could create together. And they agreed that they could create some spectacularly interesting little humans. Though she never told him this, she had so looked forward to meeting those little humans.

Had they been born back then, they would be adults now. 

She knew he had children with his ex-wife. She heard he was a good father, though he had taken several steps back when his wife remarried. There was no doubt that he loved those kids, that was the kind of man he was. Why step back?

Were the children interesting people? Did they take after their mother? She knew their mother and … dammit, stop thinking that way! 

"What a bitch I am to be so uncharitable to the mother of his children," she would think reproachfully. And to those kids! She knew well that any kids of his would be interesting.

She couldn't help but wonder, though, why he had apparently distanced himself from them.

There was no way he would have been distanced from any child of theirs.

\------------

He had pictures in his mind of their children – not what they looked like, really, more what they would be like. They would be intelligent, no doubt of that. And they would have wicked senses of humor.

He smiled thinking about the simple things that could make both him and her wild with laughter. And it was always shared laughter – they never laughed at each other, just with each other. The same would be true with their kids, he was sure of it.

Whenever he had imagined a family with her, they were always laughing. Both he and she were looking at the faceless little beings in front of them, laughing with them. 

He had imagined travelling with her and them for more than twenty years. Those fantasies sometimes felt as real to him as his actual life. They would take the kids to Indiana, to Trebus, to the bottom of oceans and the top of mountains. He wanted their kids to experience and see everything. 

He would bring souvenirs back from every mission. Not tawdry trinkets purchased and transport station gift shops, but something that was part of the world he visited. He heard her explaining to little ones that the shiny rock he brought them wasn’t a diamond but a quartz crystal. And she would explain how quartz crystals grow under the ground when a planet is cooling, and she’d remind them how interesting geology was.

But then he would take the rock and weave a story for those same little ones that the crystal actually was a special, magical jewel that had to be given to the best mommy in the universe. And then tiny hands and earnest, solemn faces would take the rock to her, while he looked on smiling.

Yes, it was an oddly specific thing to imagine. He had dreamed it one night long ago, when such things were still possible. 

He loved that dream. He hung onto it.

\------------

Remembering him meant reliving that old pain.

She remembered the coldness that seemed to be creeping into the widening spaces between them.

She recalled the messages each left for the other that were never returned.

She could still feel the void created in her stomach the moment he told her that they needed to talk. She knew right then what was happening. He was going to kill whatever tiny chance they still had left.

And she had no control over it at all. All these years later, and it still made her sick to her stomach.

\------------

What had made him do it in the end? It was amazing, he could remember every detail of every dream he ever had about her. But he couldn’t remember why he broke her heart. 

Had he finally gotten so old that he couldn’t remember the reasons for the worst decision of his life?

Of course, back when he did it, he assumed she would stay in his life. He assumed she would always be there. But she wasn’t. She left.

He was responsible. When he broke her heart, he kicked her out of his life, he knew that now. And for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the reason.

\------------

She changed that day. She knew it then and life had only proven her right – something in her died that day.

She made half-hearted attempts at other relationships. In the immediate aftermath, she had even pursued a couple of men she found attractive. But they were never right, they never made sense in her life.

“I allowed myself to become a lonely, angry old lady,” she would tell herself. It was true. She had chased loneliness with grim determination, almost as though it was a way to punish him.

She was angry at herself for that. Hell, she was angry at herself for everything.

\------------

Whenever he ran into one of their old friends, he wouldn’t ask about her, but they would bring her up. And while they could tell him plenty about the feting she’s received at retirement, they couldn’t tell him if she was happy.

He heard how she had isolated herself more and more over the years. How her eyes always had a shadow of sadness in them.

That shadow, he never forgot it. He put it there.

\------------

She had tried not to blame him. She really had. But even all these years later, she was angry.

“But he was only reacting to what I did, the limits I created,” she argued with herself. “If I had been a better person, stronger, more confident, it might have ended differently”

She really blamed herself.

\------------

It took him a long time to acknowledge what he had done to her. He had pursued her with joy and energy. He had made promises to her. And then he left her alone.

Did it matter that he still hurt, that he had lived a life of regret? He wasn’t sure it did.

\------------

Now, decades later, she lives alone. Her face is lined, her hands shake. But she still wonders, “Does he ever think of me?”

\------------

His hair is gray and his strength mostly gone. Time has how left him isolated. And he cannot help but wonder, “Does she ever think about me?”

\------------

And at the end, each with only one thought.

"Chakotay."

"Kathryn."

And then they finally slept.


End file.
